Making offshore communication a reality

Pipeline Magazine interview with Mike Odell, Reality Mobile

Reality Mobile is introducing its RealityVision collaboration tool to the energy market. Pipeline discusses state-of-the-art communications technology with Reality Mobile’s Mike Odell, Vice President of Global Energy Markets.

RealityVision is a real time, mobile collaboration software platform. The technology opens up possibilities for better remote operations monitoring and improved HSE practices for the energy industry. Imagine that an inspection team uncovers a pipeline integrity problem in a remote location. Using RealityVision’s platform, field engineers can instantly bring a team of experts, from anywhere in the world, to the same level of visual understanding by shooting video from a smartphone.

Pipeline: In the energy industry, how important is visualisation and collaboration in remote, field operations?

Modern day oil and gas operations are vastly complex, decentralised, data rich environments with a wide variety of disciplines working together to ensure safe, economical and efficient performance. Quite often subject matter experts are in different locations from where the task at hand is undertaken. Complicating operations further is the challenge associated with the expected “crew change” that will occur over the next five to ten years when many of the most seasoned and experienced employees will retire – leaving the industry with a knowledge void.

These factors make it critical for employees and experts located in disparate locations to be able to efficiently and effectively collaborate. This kind of collaboration is enabled by real-time visualisation of data and information from the field. RealityVision addresses these challenges by allowing users to share data and video with other users anywhere, giving them the ability to instantly create a shared vision of an asset or event. Users can connect to the network and share information via a number of devices ranging from their desktop computer to intrinsically safe devices to smart phones. Once connected, users can both push and pull video, data and GPS tracking information over the network. The result is faster and better informed decision making, better monitoring of remote operations and improved HSE practices.

Read the entire article here.